Calm waters greeted National Geographic Orion as we cruised from Sardinia towards the Italian mainland today. A series of lectures, an outdoor lunch in the beautiful Mediterranean springtime, and wildlife watching filled the hours until early afternoon, when our first cruising destination came into view: the volcanic island of Stromboli, a 3,031-ft stratovolcano with two active craters that erupt continuously several times a minute! Fortunately, these eruptions are relatively mild, allowing our ship to sail by safely and take in the phenomenal landscape. Evening brought us to the Strait of Messina, a narrow and tumultuous gap between southern Italy and Sicily that made for formidable sailing for early Mediterranean explorers. Her terrors are now more the stuff of legend, most famously the story of Scylla and Charybdis in “The Odyssey.” Still, it’s never a bad idea to keep an eye out for sea monsters…
5/23/2025
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National Geographic Orion
Delphi and Corinth Canal, Greece
Delphi, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is our morning’s destination. It’s a scenic drive from the port of Itea to Delphi, with grand vistas overlooking olive orchards of staggering size, surrounding snow-spotted mountains and the Ionian Sea. Once on site, we walked back into deep time, thousands of years into the past to join the Greek gods. Some of us chose to visit an olive grove instead of Delphi. Once we learned about the process of turning olives into oil, we had the pleasure of sampling a variety of olive oils along with other tasty local snacks. Back on board for the afternoon, we headed out to sea. Historian David Brotherson presented, “Thunder, Gods and Underdogs: the Greco-Persian wars.” Later, National Geographic Photographer MacDuff Everson shared, “How I Became a National Geographic Photographer.” The Corinth Canal was the icing on our Mediterranean voyage cake. We transited the canal after dinner.
